“All of me, Brando. Yours. I’m yours even more so now. A tangible part of you lives inside of me.”
“Never deny me again.”
Talk to me, explain it to me, ask me to be gentle or demand that I take what’s mine with greed and roughness, but never deny me. Those were the words he hadn’t said, but I could hear the silent thoughts as though they were my own.
“Never, never, never.I didn’t want to hurt the—”
His mouth closed over mine, shutting me up. If I had worried about him being rough earlier, it was me who he had to tame down. I felt neglected, starved,ravenousto have him inside of me ten different ways at once. My body was trained to go to war with his. It was anxious for the battle.
He made a wild noise deep in his throat when his hands ripped the bra from my breasts. He stared at them as though he was seeing them for the first time. Palming the soft flesh, he lifted, feeling their weight, his thumbs stroking over my nipples.
The light touch sent sparks shooting through my veins, my skin catching fire like it was made of paper. I bucked underneath him, his hesitation a slow drip of cold water.
He looked down at me. “Con calma.”
My underwear—which were a bit too small, anyway—came off next. He came close, oh so damn close. Close enough that if I slid down, I could feel him inside. But he’d stopped me with two words. “Still yourself.”
“You came close to bleeding me dry this time,” he said in Italian, setting my hand over his heart. “I’m still bleeding. Not even your touch can stop it. If you ever leave me again, Scarlett Rose Fausti, I will not return.”
The look in his eyes terrified me. His word was as good as his blood. He wouldn’t return to me. “I was desperate. So afraid.” So many damn excuses, none that seemed worth it in hindsight.
“No more words because that’s all they are,” he continued in Italian. “Speak to me through actions.”
Instead of finding each other through bodily combat, we seemed to find our way back to each other through a temporary offering of peace. He made love to me until the sun came up, an olive branch between his heart and mine.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Brando
By the end of July, my wife was another year older, and instead of swollen, she was ripe. Only her breasts and stomach, though. If her back was turned, there was no evidence that she carried my child.
Until she turned around, then it was necessary to give her space, or brush the edge of the perfect mound with my own still-flat stomach.
That little mound had taken to kicking me all night long. If I faced my wife, her stomach was against my stomach, or my back, if Scarlett spooned against me. The baby seemed to have insomnia. After Scarlett had calmed, the rocking inside stilled, the baby woke up.
Not being able to sleep either, I’d put on a soft light and read to Scarlett’s stomach. Her entire stomach would jiggle. Instead of calming the baby, the sound of my voice seemed to excite him or her even more.
Scarlett would laugh in her sleep, as if she held a secret from me. When I demanded that she tell me, it was, “Oh, she just loves you so much. Already. She loves the sound of your voice. She’s going to come out speaking Italian.Papà, dammi gli spaghetti!”
Scarlett blamed it on the baby, but she didn’t fool me.Sheloved spaghetti and ate pounds of it. “For the baby,” she’d say on a shrug, twirling and sucking. Then repeat the words, “Daddy, give me spaghetti!”
Daddy. Papà.No matter what language, I was going to be that. A father. The hollowness that I felt, like I had hit a huge dip in the road and things started to flutter all over the fucking place, when Scarlett would walk into the room, or smile at me, or touch me, happened when she called me that.Papà.
Then the fluttering things would start to crawl over my skin, and I’d seize up. It happened the same way when Scarlett whispered beautiful words against my skin.
In a short time, my wife would give birth to our child. And I still couldn’t settle on one feeling about it.
I raged.
I even cried.
Sometimes in the stillness of the night, when the baby kicked me, a semblance of peace in the situation came. Resolve.All is well.
Then the thought that it might not be ashebut ahewould consume me. All of my brothers and cousins were having boys. No surprise there. They all wanted to know.
During the ultrasound, when the shape of a baby,mine, came into view, the baby’s heartbeat drumming around me, and the moment became real, the doctor had asked if we wanted to know the sex.
Scarlett had looked at me—I felt her eyes on my face, but I couldn’t look away from the screen, or soften the grip I had on her hand.
